Flood crisis reaches epic proportions

The damage bill for the flood crisis is growing and is predicted to be in the billions.

Transcript

TRACY BOWDEN, PRESENTER: First to Queensland where the flood disaster continues. Rockhampton remains the centre of the crisis. Most of the vital transport links to the city are now cut, and a temporary air base for emergency service helicopters has been set up on the outskirts.

Meanwhile, the residents of St George, 500 kilometres west of Brisbane, are bracing for flood levels not seen since the 1890s. The damage bill is rising daily and is expected to reach into the billions.

Shortly we'll be crossing to Rockhampton for the latest. But first this report from John Taylor.

JOHN TAYLOR, REPORTER: In flood-affected Queensland, life has a new rhythm. Parts of Rockhampton have become Venice, but in the most unromantic of ways.

LES PYE, ROCKHAMPTON RESIDENT: I'm just going down home to check on things.

JOHN TAYLOR: There are no gondolas here, just tinnies and dinghies.

Sixty-seven-year-old Les Pye has lived in this house for more than two decades.

LES PYE: I come back here every night and you know in the morning again. Keep an eye on things, and everyone around here keeps an eye on one another.

JOHN TAYLOR: He's betting the floodwaters won't enter his home. And one thing he's not is frightened.

LES PYE: No, Christ, we were commercial fishermen for 40 years and been through cyclones, you know out on the reefs and up the coast and god knows what, you know. This is a breeze.

JOHN TAYLOR: But Rockhampton, with a population of 75,000 people, is for the moment at the centre of Queensland's flooding crisis. The Fitzroy River is expected to peak perhaps tomorrow, at 9.4 metres with hundreds of homes flooded.

BRAD CARTER, ROCKHAMPTON MAYOR: Well at this stage we're still expecting the inundation over floorboards to be about 400. We're not sure how many are over the floorboards at the moment at the 9.2 metre mark. We have about nearly 80 people that are staying at the emergency evacuation centre and we are still expecting that there'll be 4000 parcels of land throughout this region inundated with water.

JOHN TAYLOR: At the showground, thousands of sandbags have been filled to give out to the public.

PHIL MALPASS, ROCKHAMPTON RESIDENT: Everybody here today is a volunteer. These guys have just turned up because they want to do something to help out the community. And they don't know where to go to help people out and they've just driven past and decided to drop in and help out.

JOHN TAYLOR: This has been a slow-motion disaster that has taken weeks to arrive. It's also going to take a long time for the water to clear.

BRAD CARTER: There is a suggestion that this may remain at the peak, whatever that peak is, for a period of up to two days, then as it starts to drop and flatten out it's likely to be about 10 days or so that it could stay at the, or up to 10 days, at the 8.5 metre mark, which indicates that we will have significant water inundation for the best part of nearly up to another two weeks.

JOHN TAYLOR: It'll also take a long time to assess the true cost of the floodwaters.

SAUL ESLAKE, ECONOMIST, GRATTAN INSTITUTE: Well, preliminary estimates that have been made thus far centre around 0.25 to 0.5 per cent of Australia's GDP. That's a figure equivalent to between $3 billion and $6 billion.

Because the floods have occurred over the year break, that is some in December, some in January, the effects are going to show up in both the December and the March quarters, so they won't be as big in a single quarter as if this, for example, had occurred since new year's day.

But it's still going to be noticeable impact when the figures are eventually released.

JOHN TAYLOR: In flood-affected areas, animals have been forced to take whatever shelter they can find. Valuable crops near the point of harvest have been destroyed. And the mining industry is also reeling. Three-quarters of all coal fields are unable to operate in supply markets.

SAUL ESLAKE: Queensland supplies almost half the world's coking coal at the moment and estimates are that the floods are costing $400 million a week in export income foregone. Now eventually that will be made up when the mines reopen and rail transport is restored and as all those ships waiting off the Queensland coast get filled up again. But some of the other losses, particularly estimates ranging up to $1 billion of lost agricultural production represent permanent losses and they'll be wiped off this year's farm income and this year's national income.

JOHN TAYLOR: In Emerald, west of Rockhampton, miners who haven't been able to work for weeks are helping clean the town.

PAUL O'DONOHUE, EMERALD MINER: Oh just cleaning out mate, we finished this one, we'll probably go over here and give these guys a hand, and anyone else that wants a hand we'll just go around. The company'll tell us where to go next.

JOHN TAYLOR: Not far from Emerald is the Fairbairn Dam. It's currently at 151 per cent of its capacity, an amount equal to half the water in Sydney harbour is flowing over the spillway every day. St George is a cotton and grazing town near the New South Wales border, home to a few thousand people. It's now bracing for the worst, with predictions 80 per cent of the town could be inundated next week. Roads are already cut and levies and sandbag walls are being built. It'll be the town's second major flood in less than a year and many have had enough.

PETER GOODWIN, COUNCIL FOREMAN: I've just finished repairing it from the last time, and here we go again. I feel there's a sorry, there's a person down there, she lives in Chinchilla and her and her dad have spent all this bloody money down there fixing this place up and now it's going to go under again. So that's a direct hit in the pocket, isn't it? Bit sad.

JOHN TAYLOR: Queensland's flood crisis is far from over. And even when the rivers finally do peak, it won't be the end.

ALASTAIR DAWSON, CHIEF SUPERINDENTANT, QUEENSLAND POLICE: This is a prolonged flooding event in Queensland and it is unlikely to recede in the very near future and we expect that the, once the peaks have been reached in and around a lot of these centres that the waters will remain high, that is about major flood levels, for some days after that event.